From Casey Drottar:
The Yankees’ bullpen entered Saturday night’s bout with the Brewers boasting a collective 3.18 ERA, second only to the Rangers in the Majors. It was the kind of résumé that implies the unit was built for a contest like the one that unfolded at American Family Field.
The Yankees nursed a 2-0 lead through the bulk of the game, and after starter Cam Schlittler grinded through six scoreless innings despite taking a 108.5 mph comebacker off the back of his left calf, the stage was set for New York’s ‘pen to secure the tight victory.
Instead, a meltdown ensued, culminating with a head-scratching play from left-hander Tim Hill that ultimately sealed the Yankees’ 4-3 loss in the 10th.
Hill came on in relief after Fernando Cruz allowed the tying run on an RBI single from Jackson Chourio. With men at first and second and one out, the goal was simply to keep the game alive into the 11th.
Hill got Brice Turang to hit a soft grounder to the left of the mound, seemingly setting up an easy out at first. Instead, Hill threw to third, where an unsuspecting Ryan McMahon was slowly jogging to position.
The ball hit Brewers baserunner Luis Rengifo in the hand. Everyone was safe, and what looked like a tailor-made second out instead resulted in Milwaukee loading the bases.
“I made a good pitch, and then a bad decision,” Hill said. “I feel like my instincts told me, ‘Third,’ and my instincts were wrong.”
Hill should tell the REAL truth, which is that he didn’t realize that there was one out already in the inning. The only reason in the WORLD you would go to third there is if you think that there were no outs in the inning. For some reason, though, he doesn’t want to admit that he lost track of the outs, and instead just wants us to believe his “instincts” said to throw to third for no reason? Come on now.
The maddening thing about it was that Hill should have obviously been pitching in the game already in the 8th inning. When Camilo Doval came in in the 8th inning, I assumed that since Hill had pitched three times in the previous four games, that Boone was holding him back for an emergency, but as it turned out, nope, Boone just actively decided to use Camilo fucking Doval in the 8th inning of a one-run game instead of his by FAR best setup guy this year.
And then, with a one-run lead in the 10th, rather than sticking with his closer, who only needed 12 pitches to get through the 9th inning, Boone went to NOT Hill again, but to Fernando Cruz, who blew the save almost immediately by throwing the ball away while the batter was trying to give Cruz an out with a bunt. Just total clown shoes baseball pitching here.
The bullpen has been mostly fine, but that’s because Boone has been able to mostly rely heavily on Headrick, Hill, and Bednar. Headrick gave up a solo home run tonight, but Bednar and Hill were both good, as always, Hill was just brought into a bad situation, and then he made a moronic play. Had he NOT done that, he would have gotten out of the inning unscathed.
Ugh.
Boone had NO explanation for why he didn’t use hiss BEST setup guy (BY FAR) in the 8th, or why he didn’t go to him in the 10th, but he DID at least try to explain why he didn’t use Bednar in the 10th, and it was just goobley gook. Basically, he felt that he just couldn’t keep having Bednar pitch two innings, but he’s had Bednar pitch more than one inning ONCE in the past MONTH (twice all season!), so what the fuck is he even talking about?!
He’s likely thinking of that time, OVER A MONTH AGO, when he used Bednar in the 8th inning to get five outs against Seattle, and then used him three days later for 33 pitches against Miami. Combined with his WBC workload, it seemed like Bednar then had some trouble the next couple of weeks after throwing so much, but that was over a MONTH AGO!
God, he’s just so fucking stupid.
THAT SAID, while the bullpen was bad (and Hill’s moronic play gets the featured image), this game was mostly on the offense, who had SO many opportunities, and did shit with them. Let’s give a special note to Aaron Judge, who got thrown out at third for some dumb reason in the top of the 10th inning after Ryan McMahon actually came through with a huge two-out, two-strike base hit against a lefty, and then Judge also made a terrible throw on the game-losing sacrifice fly. He likely wouldn’t have gotten the relatively speedy Rengifo, but he could have made it at least SOMEwhat close.
Oh, and Spencer Jones struck out pathetically with the bases loaded. This dude sure isn’t making the Yankees look unreasonable for showing very little interest in calling him up from the minors so far with his 0 for the series so far.
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My O’s friend just told me a stat…
The Yankees are 1-7 against teams over .500. That can’t be true right? I don’t know where to verify that other than manually going through their schedule.
MLB dot com standings has this. They say 1-5. It’s important to note that this gets revised as the records of the teams they play changes
Yes, and Brian debunked this as a stupid stat by, I think reasonably, stating that many of the under .500 teams are there because the Yankees beat them.
It’s too early for this stuff.
The Yankees are good. They need two more very good relievers and a better manager.
The latter is the reason that I don’t think the Yankees can win a WS. Harumph!